Tadeusz Sarnecki and Ewa Sarnecka papers

Tadeusz Jerzy Sarnecki (1911-1981) was an educator, journalist, and writer born in Łódź to Adam and Wiktoria Sarnecki. Tadeusz and Ewa worked as couriers for the Zamość and Lublin branch of Żegota (Council for Aid to Jews), a Polish underground organization that provided for the social welfare needs of Jews, from 1942 to 1944. Using false names Kazimierz Hutecki and Regina Cybulska, they travelled to selected labor camps in the region, including Piotrków Trybunalski, Radom, and Starachowice, bringing money, documents, food, medicine and letters to the Jews imprisoned there. On several occasions they were also able to smuggle individuals out of the camps. Tadeusz' duties also took him to Lodz, where he linked up with an underground cell of the Polish Democratic Party (Stronnictwo Demokratyczne) and the Łódź unit of the Polish Home Army (AK). Together they arranged for deliveries of money and medicine to Jews in the ghetto. Tadeusz also wrote and published underground newspapers and literary magazines. A poet in his own right, he was asked by Adolf Berman to prepare an anthology of ghetto poetry. The anthology, From the Abyss, included poems by Czesław Miłosz, Mieczysław Jastrun, Jan Kott, and Michał Borwicz. Printed in April 1944, 3,000 copies of the anthology were distributed. Like other underground publications, From the Abyss was microfilmed and sent by Polish courier to London. It was then published in England and the United States. A Hebrew translation was later printed in Palestine.

The family history of Ewa Sarnecka (approximately 1923-1993) is unclear, but she may have been born to Bund organizer Moszko Rodzynek in Biała Podlaska. Tadeusz and Ewa worked as couriers for the Zamość and Lublin branch of Żegota (Council for Aid to Jews), a Polish underground organization that provided for the social welfare needs of Jews, from 1942 to 1944. Using false names Kazimierz Hutecki and Regina Cybulska, they travelled to selected labor camps in the region, including Piotrków Trybunalski, Radom, and Starachowice, bringing money, documents, food, medicine and letters to the Jews imprisoned there. On several occasions they were also able to smuggle individuals out of the camps.